Project Evo: Tanabe Sustec & TEAS Review

As many of you already know, when you start on a path of modification sometimes it’s difficult to figure out when to stop modifying your car. You initially set up a goal in order to give yourself a sense of accomplishment. The funny thing is when you reach the top of the mountain; you end up saying to yourself “Can I do more?” Everyone knows the downward spiral from here. You immediately start thinking about the possibilities, which start to brainwash you. You convince yourself that your car is boring and you need a change. At this point this is where you end up in a “fork in the road” type of situation. Should I start a new project or shouldn’t I?

You immediately start to rationalize and think back to the pain and struggle you went through to get the car to its initial goal. Thinking to yourself, “That downtime wasn’t too bad”. Well now you know how we felt when we got a chance to try out Tanabe’s new set of Sustec Pro Seven suspension and the TEAS unit to go along with it. We wanted change and this setup could help us with that change.

Before we received the suspension I started to research the set up through the site and any other resource I could find. The list of features the suspension had to offer was very attractive. I immediately looked for the spring rates to see what I was going to be dealing with: 12kg in the front and 10kg in the rear. Pretty high rates but Tanabe claimed that this set up could be used for various driving environments (street and competition), which is very appealing. I wanted to find out for myself.

Installation
After a week of waiting, the UPS man came with the goods. After tearing the box, I could see four nicely packaged coilovers. I had to get these on the car! I immediately got the car on the lift and started the install.

Installation was very simple for the suspension and was completed in less then 2 hours (I love air tools!). The TEAS installation was also an easy install and took us about an hour or so to install. We did spend a little extra time making sure that everything was torque’d down correctly so we wouldn’t run into issues later. After the final inspection, the car came off the lift and was sent out for the initial test drive.

Product Build
We usually don’t talk too much about the build quality on some of the parts we review, so I figured I would take the opportunity to do so with the Teas and Sustec pro. The overall construction of the Sustec pro is pretty nice. The welds look strong and overall appearance looks very good. The hardware (camber plates, height adjustments, etc) were very well constructed as well.

With the Teas, the overall build is very basic and simple (small and light), which is what I prefer when it comes to electronic control boxes. The unit is small enough to fit it most places of the car, so mounting solutions shouldn’t be too difficult.

Initial Driving Impressions (Street Only and the car was not dialed in)
This initial drive wasn’t to test out the handling characteristics of the car, but more so to play with the TEAS. I initially set the damper setting to 1 (front and rear). Driving around with this setting was interesting. The setting was very soft and many of you who like a firm setup will not like this setting. I had to turn the dial up. The next damper setting I went to was 5 (front and rear). Finally we are getting somewhere! The ride was firmer then the previous setting. This setting was a good compromise for the street, firm but not so much that your head gets knocked around.

Finally I decided to see how far we could take this. I tried 10 (front and rear) and 16(front and rear). Wow what a difference. Definitely something I wouldn’t leave set especially for the street. My body was bouncing around like a rock in a can. I have to admit though it was pretty fun to drive the car in the stiff setting because it made the car feel very responsive and minimized body roll.

After an hour or so of parading around town, I decided to get the car dialed in to see how the setup truly feels.

Part 2 – Driving Impression (Street Only with the car dialed in)
Now that the car was dialed in, it was time to find out the car’s road handling characteristics and to really use the TEAS to its full potential (speed sensitive dampener controlling). The impressive thing about the TEAS active mode is you can also preprogram the unit to specifically set the dampener settings on the suspension based on a specific speed (as slow as 5mph).

TEAS Impression
The only other car I’ve ever been in to have some type of automatic dampener control has been the MB E55 AMG, but without the speed sensor option. I felt that this feature would be great on an Evo especially for owners who don’t want the full “Race” setup all the time and would prefer a way to adjust stiffness settings whenever they feel like.

The best place to test the TEAS was on the highway and some of the back twisty roads that most of you are familiar with. The first test was the highway. I set the TEAS to active mode and got on the on-ramp of the highway. The TEAS immediately started to tighten things up during my trip on the on-ramp. Once I merged onto the highway, I gave it a little gas and it continued to tighten things up. Very cool! The next test was driving the car on some twisty back roads.

As I did in the previous highway test, I set the TEAS in active mode and headed out on the back road. The TEAS did its job of stiffening the suspension to accommodate the driving, but there was a big difference between this test and the highway. Highway speeds are always consistent, whereas, other forms of driving where not. Tuning the TEAS was necessary in order to get the right dampener setting for this type driving.

After playing around for about an hour, I finally programmed a setup I liked. The car was crisp and in control.

In Conclusion
Overall I have to say that Tanabe’s Sustec Pro Seven and TEAS is a fairly good package all together. It can be overwhelming at first because of the many different features you can play around with, but once you figure it out it can be a blast to drive around in. As I said before, the one thing I liked about this set up is its ability to accommodate a wide range of driving environments. You also have an option to fine tune your settings and save them as preprogrammed options. Great for the daily commuter and weekend track monkey. All you need is a little patience to get the setup tuned right for your needs and some gas money. Stay tuned for part 2 when we take the car to the track.

Tanabe Usa

http://www.tanabe-usa.com/

Dynamic Power Solutions

http://www.dpstuning.com/

Project Evo: Tanabe Sustec & TEAS Review

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